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So in that same spirit here is a previously published poem of mine. If it moves you pass it on and hopefully that original throwie that inspired me to write will continue to inspire others.

LEGAL TENDER

by: J. Wittmer

There is something pure about writing a poem

on whatever is at hand and readily available

cocktail napkins seem the most common

often the backs of fliers

though any blank inviting space

or typewritten page with a wide enough margin

has the potential to grow beyond

its original intended purpose.

I have written poems on all manner

of blank surface.

Walls, postcards, envelopes, pant legs,

the left palm, margins of books,

coffee pot filters, a crumpled paper cup

that happened to blow my way.

Only the most concise poems

will fit on the

diminutive real-estate of an empty glassine

stamp collectors and heroin addicts

need the steady hands of surgeons

to draw the tiny letters required.

It is especially sweet to spill

out a poem on the envelope

of an unopened bill.

I always reserve the hope

for poets everywhere

that someday

we all will be able to send those bills back

to our creditors

unopened

with our words scrawled across

the envelopes triangular folds

and that our

accounts will be reconciled

the poem accepted as

legal tender.

I have seen poems written

in Japanese characters on grains of rice

and imagined

the delicate fingers capable of such a thing.

Those invertebrate fingers

softer than sea vegetables

like tiny probing antennae

painting the smallest poems

on pages to perfect to bind.

In my ideal world billboards

would be stripped of suggestive commerce

making space for poets to

advertise the minds capacity

for squalor and beauty.

Teary eyed nine to fivers would arrive at the factory

having read an entire anthology

on the morning commute

and maybe call their spouses

to tell them for the first time

in far too long how much

they are appreciated and loved.

Sit down strikes

would be inspired

though traffic accidents

may be more common.

Tyrannical bosses would soften

or if not be strung up

by the worker empowered by

Marxist inspired prose.

Only the most urgent poems would

adorn the sides of ambulances

only the loudest, sickest poems

would you read as they

sped by.

At the recycling center

you would find only the

heavily read lines of

masters

maybe broken from the

original poem

mulched and jumbled together

with the rest of their contemporaries

a brand new masterpiece

reborn out of the cumulative bits.

Our world could change over night

if every dull surface were covered with words.

I have seen it happen in cities

where graffiti artists have

hung harnessed at the ends of ropes

from the sides of

two story concrete promontories

hidden by the blind night of a new moon.

The next morning as the sun rose

unveiling the poignant possibility of

all ordinary concrete slabs,

it was for some

as if the sun were

rising for the first time

the brilliant color of another mans

visionary spirit

spilling like truth into their own.

It was that way for me.

And for that single morning

in that small section of that particular city

the world seemed much different than it had

just the day before.

All the commonly overlooked possibilities

staring starkly and vividly

asking us why

we hadn't thought of them

before.